


Promises

by icewhisper



Series: The Truth Of It All [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Post-Ishval, no one is having a good time right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23560372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Four months and one week after they returned from war, Maes walked into the bar and Roy wasn’t there.
Relationships: Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang
Series: The Truth Of It All [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695760
Comments: 16
Kudos: 81





	Promises

The bar was louder than either of them wanted it to be. Music played from the radio turned up too high in the corner, crooning some old ballad that had a handful of drunken couples slow dancing in the middle of everyone else’s walking space. Glasses clinked as boisterous men who had never fought in a war gloated about a victory that left desert sands soaked in red like a nightmare tide had washed through.

The soldiers sat, huddled around tables and tucked into corners. Some were still in their uniforms, as if they didn’t know how to dress themselves without the military blue. Others were stripped half out of it.

Maes had taken off his uniform the second he got home and didn’t know if he’d have the stomach to put it on again.

Roy’s hands still shook like he wouldn’t manage to button his shirt if he’d wanted to.

“It’s not so easy to bury it all down,” he admitted and felt foolish for thinking he’d be able to. He couldn’t bury the memories any easier than he could wash the blood off his hands or the lives off his soul. Gracia had held him that whole first night, her arms strong around him while he sobbed, vomited up his dinner, and pled for forgiveness she didn’t have the power to give him.

Roy had returned to an empty apartment as Riza went off to finish packing up her father’s home. They’d see her again in a couple weeks, he knew, but he worried about her while she was gone. Roy knew her better – was closer to her than Maes was – but she was younger than both of them and no amount of skill with a gun made taking a life easier.

They’d taken a lot of lives.

“You can’t bury this,” Roy said, voice rough. He tossed back the rest of his glass, didn’t flinch at the burn, and motioned to the bartender for another.

“We have to learn to live with it. We can’t take it back.” He sighed, staring down into the amber liquid still lingering in his glass. It wasn’t helping. He  _ knew _ it wouldn’t, no more than it had ever helped his father. He hadn’t even come here to drink, really. The only reason he’d left his apartment at all was because he’d promised Roy he’d meet him.

Roy had already been three drinks in when he got there.

“Have you been sleeping?” he asked quietly.

“No,” Roy admitted and brought the refilled glass to his lips.

“You need to sleep, Roy,” he said, but he felt like a hypocrite as he did. It wasn’t as if he was sleeping any better. He’d thought he would with Gracia beside him, but she’d startled him so bad that first night, he’d blinked awake from a nightmare to find his hand wrapped around her throat. He hadn’t let her spend the night since.

No, he thought. He was not the person who should be lecturing Roy about sleeping.

“Come on,” he said instead. “Let me drive you home.”

“I’ll get a cab,” Roy told him, bruises dark under his eyes as he stared into his glass. “I’m not done yet.”

For a moment, it was like being a child again and trying to urge his dad home from the bar. He’d never managed it and, eventually, they’d left – his mother and him in a too-small apartment that didn’t feel like home and his father left behind to drink himself to death.

“Meet me next week,” he told Roy. “Right here. Every week.”

“Why?”

“Because dragging myself out once a week is all I can manage right now,” he admitted, “and I need to know you’re not doing anything stupid.”

Roy huffed out a laugh that sounded bitter, but Maes didn’t think it was at him as he tossed back the rest of his drink. He signaled for another. “Fine. Next week.”

“Same time. Promise me, Roy.”

Roy raised two fingers dully. “Promise.”

He kept the promise for four months. Once a week, they met at the same spot in the bar. Roy would already be three drinks in with a jacket that was never military blue draped over the stool next to him in reserve. They’d sit. Roy would drink too much. Maes would have the one drink he ever allowed himself. They’d promise to see each other the next week.

Maes was starting to sleep more than two hours at a time, but Roy looked like he’d given up on sleeping at all, always tracing circles into the condensation on his glass and against the bartop.

He should have thought better of it, should have remembered haunting words in a bombed out building when Roy said, “You know, they think there’s a way to bring people back from the dead.”

Four months and one week after they returned from war, Maes walked into the bar and Roy wasn’t there.

He waited, eyes watching the clock on the wall. Second by second. Minute by minute. One hour, he told himself, if Roy didn’t show up in an hour, he’d go by his apartment.

He lasted twenty minutes before restlessness pushed him from the stool and out the door.

It didn’t matter.

It was already too late.

He heard the gasping cries when he reached the door, careful like they were still in enemy territory. Like they weren’t allowed to scream. His stomach twisted and he knocked. “Roy? It’s Hughes.”

Roy didn’t come to the door. Didn’t let him in. He didn’t even hear the sounds of steps. He knocked harder. “Roy, it’s Hughes,” he said again. “Answer me.”

All he got was a louder cry of pain and he knew – damn well fucking  _ knew _ – something was wrong.

He slammed his body weight into the door without bothering to check if the door was unlocked. Wood splintered as the lock gave way and the door burst open so he could stumble in and-

His foot slid in blood.

It wasn’t a big apartment. What space Roy had, he’d covered wall-to-wall in bookcases, but it was more cramped now. The army duffle that looked like Roy had never bothered to unpack it. Stacks of books on the floor.

The transmutation circle with  _ something _ twisted and broken in the middle.

Roy on the floor just outside it, chin bloody from biting through his lip and-

His arms.

Oh,  _ God _ , his arms.

He stumbled back a step before he rushed forward. His arms. Roy’s arms. His arms were  _ gone _ , blood spitting out from where his shoulders curved and just  _ stopped _ . Blood soaked into his pants as he knelt on the floor, but he didn’t care –  _ couldn’t _ care about something as trivial as his clothes when Roy was…

“What the hell did you do?” he demanded, frantic and terrified as he pressed both his hands to where Roy’s arms should have started. Realized too late he should have been using his jacket to try and stem the bleeding, because his hands were probably dirty and Roy’s  _ stumps _ were goddamn open wounds.

“I had to try and fix it,” Roy told him with a calm that spoke of shock and too much blood loss. “I had to try and save some of them.”

Horrified, he looked at the twisted  _ thing _ in the middle of the transmutation circle. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Ishvalan. It wasn’t even human.

“It took them,” Roy told him when Maes forced them both to their feet. “My arms. It showed me what I did wrong, but I had to pay for it. Multiple people, multiple tolls.”

“What, Roy?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure Roy wasn’t lucid enough to give him a straight answer right then. Whatever kept him talking, though. Roy talking meant Roy was  _ alive _ . “What took them?”

“Truth,” Roy murmured as his face went ashen. “I saw everything, Maes.”

“Okay. Okay, Roy. Just stay with me, alright? We’re gonna get you to a doctor.”

“Maes,” he said quietly as his knees buckled and Maes had to scramble to catch him, “I can’t feel my arms…”

The End


End file.
